Project On Government Oversight

Cross-posted on POGO's blog.

By BRYAN RAHIJA

Pentagon investigators mishandled more than half of a set of whistleblower reprisal cases, according to a damning internal assessment report obtained by the Project On Government Oversight. 

The Washington Post and iWatch News published stories on the assessment over the...

Cross-posted on POGO's blog.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is taking a major step in stopping the waste of taxpayer dollars. POGO recently learned that DoD sent a legislative proposal to Congress to narrow the definition of a "commercial item" to mean goods or services that are...

By DANA LIEBELSON

Cross-posted on POGO's blog.

POGO sent a letter today to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees recommending that an expensive and severely flawed variant of the Littoral Combat Ship program be eliminated. The letter comes on the heels of POGO's release of Navy...

On Friday, Booz Allen Hamilton announced that its San Antonio office was removed from the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) and regained full eligibility to compete for new federal contracts. Booz Allen entered into a three-year administrative agreement with the U.S. Air...

By BRYAN RAHIJA

A major defense contractor is the focus of an apparent ongoing federal probe into its business dealings with Iranian companies -- dealings that could violate U.S. sanctions on Iran, a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation has found. 

The contractor, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Co. (KGL),...

By DANA LIEBELSON and BRYAN RAHIJA

Senior government officials are ignoring a White House directive that requires disclosure of key documents in the federal rulemaking process, thus hiding the potential influence of special interests on the writing of government regulations, according to a letter the Project On Government Oversight...

By JOE NEWMAN

Cross-posted on POGO's blog.

Regina Dugan's tenure at the Department of Defense's shadowy research arm is apparently over with news that Dugan is once again headed back to the private sector. Wired's Noah Shachtman reported that Dugan is taking a job with Google.

As...

By Andrew Wyner

The Sunlight Foundation recently released an analysis finding that since July 2009, at least 377 former House of Representatives staffers left their respective congressional offices to become registered lobbyists. POGO has long been concerned about the revolving door phenomenon, and Sunlight's analysis sheds light on...

By BEN FREEMAN and LYDIA DENNETT

Newt Gingrich has argued that he never was a "lobbyist" in Washington, DC, but that hasn't stopped him from turning to lobbyists for help in his presidential campaign, including at least four who have been registered to represent foreign governments. Now, an investigation by...

By BRYAN RAHIJA

Kudos to ABC's Jake Tapper for calling out the White House on its unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to silence whistleblowers. 

In a question to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at a press briefing earlier this week, Tapper pointed out the massive disconnect between the...

By ADAM ZAGORIN

The green shoots of reform began sprouting from Capitol Hill's parched ethics landscape immediately after a breathless 60 Minutes broadcast late last year. The report singlehandedly revived the so-called STOCK Act -- "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge" -- a bill largely ignored since it was...

Is the Iraq War really over or have we just outsourced it?

By Beth Schulman

The Iraq War is officially over. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops slipped quietly out of the country last year with none of the bodies-clinging-to-helicopter-struts drama that characterized America's exit from Saigon in 1975.

The...

By BEN FREEMAN

Nothing changes on New Year's Day, including the Pentagon's budget strategy.

Last Thursday, President Barack Obama and Department of Defense (DoD) officials held a press conference to release the "Defense Strategic Review," which will serve as a blueprint for reducing Pentagon spending in coming years.

This...

By MIA STEINLE and DANIELLE BRIAN

The U.S. government has never been fully open about the cost of its nuclear weapons programs. This fact has sparked a debate over how to best calculate the financial burden nuclear weapons place on taxpayers. The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler wrote this...

Cross-posted at POGO.

By DANA LIEBELSON

In the spring of 2000, an MV-22 Osprey carrying 19 Marines crashed in the desert of Arizona during a nighttime training exercise, killing everyone on board. After the Marine Corps hastily announced that the crash was the result of human...

By DANA LIEBELSON

Cross-posted on POGO's Blog.

The U.S. government's increasing reliance on contractors to do work traditionally done by federal employees is fueled by the belief that private industry can deliver services at a lower cost than in-house staff.

But a first-of-its-kind study released today by...

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

Cross-posted on POGO's blog.

A government culture change around secrecy and whistleblowing is needed in Washington, according to a panel of experts hosted by the Advisory Committee on Transparency.

Whistleblowing "should be a valuable thing. It should help people advance in their careers," said Carolyn...

By Demoni Newman

The energy industry is out for blood once again. Over a decade ago, it went after POGO for revealing that the largest oil companies were underpaying royalties to the government. And now it appears they've found a new target.

The New York Times is under fire...

By MANDY SMITHBERGER and MICHAEL SMALLBERG

Yesterday, the Supreme Court weakened the government's ability to recoup money from contractors defrauding the government. In a 5-3 decision, the Court found in Schindler Elevator Corp. vs. U.S. that private citizens cannot file lawsuits under a qui tam provision of the...

By Danielle Brian

I thought "open government" was such a simple concept -- that the "what" and the "why" were not really complicated. We want to see what the government is doing so that we can make sure it is doing it well and doing it for the right reasons.